There #2 - Exploring Zephyr

Today I visited zephyr and it had a definite mobility feel as there were tons of different vehicles to use.

There was also a difference in weather and this was the first time I had experienced this, it began to snow and snowflakes came about, a gentle tune was played and the sound of a could wind to help make the weather seem more realistic. Although it could have been improved by the snow actually settling on the ground rather than simply disappearing straight away.

I made a new buddy who took me for a ride in the car. The cars looked pretty realistic however seemed quite difficult to operate so I left it down to him. We eventually found ourselves within a racetrack but crashed and were thrown out of the car into the middle of the track. So I decided to try and get a buggy and join in the race myself.

However someone got there before me and I was caught in the middle of a race where a male avatar proceeded to continually run me over which I found rather vicious so resorted to transporting to a more civilised world to explore.

There were auctions available and a sense of business here to as I found a stall where you could view a film that had been made and then leave a tip if you wished.

Self Identity #2 - Personal Profiles

On Facebook you have a section where you give information about yourself and your personality, therefore your identity. So I decided that I should include mine as research into my own personal identity research and later analysis what it shows about me.

Self Identity - Looking into avatars

Zwinky

Ok well I have started to look into sites available to create avatars and see what I design as I feel this would be a good insight into how I view myself. The site I have looked at is zwinky.com where you are able to make an avatar which can be used on any online communities you may have such as facebook, blogger etc. There is also a virtual world called Zwinktopia where you can meet people and earn money to buy things. Therefore allowing you to become part of a craze that seems to be rapidly expanding, the chance to enter another world. I have noticed this since looking into identity due to the vast amounts of sites available.

The Sims 2

When I was younger I used to play the game The Sims 2 and there was a dialogue box where you choose your personality type. This would be a good way of looking into my identity as I have made a Sim based on myself within the game. I will be able to retrieve this information when I am next home although I can remember that out of the choices on life aspiration I always chose ‘Family’ showing that family has played an important part of my identity and who I am.

Interactive Uploaded!!!!!!

At last swfup.com has returned and is in working order and I have been able to upload my interactive for all to see so enjoy!

Interactive box ideas #2

I started making a box :) And within that box I have made many others lol I have been making a first attempt at a simple box that I could then import into flash and make interactive. After I can then work out what will go in each section to represent my identity and me. Thinking more about dancing and how it plays a large part of who I am I have been thinking of an animated way to represent this. So far I have decided I like the idea of taking pictures of me dancing in my Pointe shoes. I can then Photoshop them to be just the shoe and use the edited pictures to make a pixilation animation.

Another idea would be an animated drawing of a ballet dancer since I saw some other ones on you tube and I really like the idea of it. I could draw the dancer myself so it would be personal to me and I would use a background track of a familiar dance track which I myself used to dance to.

Scribbly Dancer

The Dance

There.com #1 - Learning the basics

Well I have had my first experience of there and have learnt the basics:
· How to get around with the use of the arrow keys
· How to visit different worlds via transporting
· How to change my appearance although this involves money
· How to interact with objects within the world simply by clicking on them
· And how to have conversations and interact via gestures with other avatars within the worlds

I made my first friend within the world, Ravern who turned out to be a lot of help. She to was new so it was easy to talk about the basics with her. I found out that popular worlds included Pizaz Island so I might check this one out on my next visit into the virtual realm. She talked about trying out activities and how she had been to paintballing however this again requires payment. I feel that she is genuine even though I know this is difficult to realistically know, but the first thing she warned me when she learnt I was new to using there.com was to watch out for guys as they often try and get personal details from you which I was really grateful for her to share with me. This turned out to be true since a guy did approach us and the only questions he asked where ‘are you ladies single’ and ‘asl’ (age, sex, loacation).

We then moved onto a more conversational tone finding out where about we were from and what we were doing in life and I found out she was in fact 28 (or so she says) and that she works as a manager within paint spraying company. I also managed to teach Ravern something within my short time within the world how to jump which I hope she will find useful. We agreed that next time we were both online we would teach each other any other new skills learnt.

Interactive box ideas

I have been doing some thinking about what makes me who I am and my own personal identity and so far I have come up with a few ideas.

Firstly one of the main things I feel that has made me who I am is my dancing. The fact that I have danced since I was three has made me disciplined and hard working from a young age and therefore shaped me into who I am now and the teachings from my classes can be applied to day to day life too. I was therefore thinking that I could perhaps create a 3D version of point shoes, which could animate and dance around to a track I greatly identify with dancing.

Another big part of me is having a positive outlook on life and I enjoy seeing the people around me happy and smiling and after the seminar with Andy looking at text I thought perhaps I could incorporate it into my box. He mentioned perhaps using a favourite word reflecting who we are so possibly I could use the world smile and animate it to do just that.

During my interview we discussed the fact that I would like to continue with interactives next year and therefore it might be a good idea to incorporate this into the design of my box. I had been thinking about this and have come up with a simple first idea of how I could do this. Looking at a simple yet addictive game on miniclip.com 'Doodle’

( http://www.miniclip.com/games/doodle/en/) I thought of the idea of having a maze-style pathway around the box with a stick man which the user moves through the pathways into each of the different sections. Each section could then only become interactive when the character is within it, helping to add to the interactivity.

I have found it quite hard to think of things that give me my identity and so thought as I am home this weekend I thought I would ask family and friends what they thought was part of my identity and see if any of there inputs give me some inspiration.

Avator - There.com

Ok second life hated me so now im trying out there but im experiencing a few problems with this too! However it is download now all I have to do is register and my online journey begins but until it works this part is put on hold :)

Online article – Virtual Insanity?

Saw this article on the web and it was disscussing online worlds and intrested me since we are looking in to them ourselves.

http://tech.uk.msn.com/features/article.aspx?cp-documentid=7217170

I don’t think that we are ignoring the real world by experiencing the virtual world but are instead giving ourselves the chance to escape from the harsh world that reality has become. You can be someone completely different and experience a type of life you have never experienced before and get an insight into the lives of others. Everyone at some point in there lives has most probably wanted to be someone else even for a day and online worlds allow us that escape. Although I can see where obsessions start where virtual crosses over reality for example many of my friends have extensive discussions about games they play online such as World of Warcraft and they begin to sound like there talking about real life. However this has been happening long before virtual reality worlds with many other medias highly soaps where we all talk about last nights goings on as though it was someone who is just down the street. But we still carry out our day to day lives in between as do those who use virtual worlds so I don’t believe it is right in saying that our own world is being jeopardised by these online worlds. Since there are very few working towards saving our world as it is so maybe instead of moaning about these online worlds they should embrace them and use them to get there points across to a wider range in the virtual world which may then transfer into the world they are so desperately trying to fight to save.

3D Maxs animation experimentation

Today I went into uni to try out a little more with 3D Max. I started looking at basic shapes and extruding them and then used the modify tools to create simple yet effective animation. The short simple animation works well as each of the shapes interact with each other before animating. The next step would be to look into adding sound to accompany it as this would enhance the animation and would highlight the movement with perhaps a change of sound. I would also like to look into more abstract shapes that I have created myself and see if i can extrude and make them morph into different shapes.

The influences I had for this first attempt was the Aygo Toyota sponsor advert for T4 where shapes all take it in turn to animate and this is where I took the idea of each one animating in turn and starting the other one off. I like the different sounds used within the animation and would like to incorporate that into my design.

Tutorial - Colour and Light!

Summer with Chanel No.5 VI

Red Sorsdahl Phase

Well for my next tutorial we have been set the task of finding an image, which screams ‘Colour and Light’. The first thing that came to mind for me which incorporates both colour and light was summer. So I therefore set about finding images categorised as summer. After much searching I found a few that really caught my eye but this one in particular really stood out. Its pretty obvious why since I don’t think you could fit much more colour into it and the strong bright colours help to add the feeling of light which I felt was shown within the picture with the sun being in the centre. As clearly the sun is the main source of our natural light so works well to help combine colour and light within this image.

Identities - Intro to 3D Max

Well turns out its not as hard as it looked and I really enjoyed the simple task of animating my name and I'm looking forward to experimenting outside of uni and getting to grips with it a bit more.

This animation could be improved simply by adding sound such as a spring when my name takes off and a thud when it hits back on the ground. Other improvements that could be added are texture and shading to help make the text look much more 3D.

I think now I will now look into working with shapes rather than text as actual objects are more likely to be incorporated into later projects.

Interview Notes

Ok just had my interview and wasn’t bad gave me some interesting pointers and showed me a really interesting site about laptops being available for only $100 allowing less fortunate countries to afford resources for children to learn and develop allowing more equal opportunities globally. I really liked the idea of making the technology accessible and will be looking further into this website and the work that was involved. The key points I came out with after the interview were:

• That I needed to use swfup.com to upload my interactive, which I was previously struggling with
  
• I need some more evidence of work outside the course
  
• I need to look at doing some critical analysis of wider medias and add visual references
  
• And finally I must begin to label my blog to help with navigation
  

So I have some tasks to keep me busy it seems

Second life character

Well I wanted to make my second life character but being the smarty pants I am I left my charger for my laptop at uni so was unable to make it but am hoping to now over the weekend since I am back in Nottingham. However I did have time to think about the kind of character I would like to make and thought it would be really interesting to firstly make a female character and live her life in the virtual world concentrating on finding a job and similar tasks that are considered highly influenced by your sex. So after I have seen how far my female aviator progresses I would then make a male with similar qualities and see if he as stereotypes would suggests progresses further within the world. It would also be interesting when being the man to see if I am lucky in romance as being a woman myself I would surely know what other women are looking for in a man so I could see if it really is what we want, although I'm thinking its probably not as we very rarely go for someone right for us!

Design work for my friend

I have been given the task of design a simple flash animation for a logo/name for my friend Aaron over Christmas as he has decided to create his own website and thought it might interest me which it of course did :) Since I only found out over Christmas I have not yet made it onto flash in the design stage and have only set about brainstorming ideas and making some early design ideas that I can discuss with him and see what he thinks. So I shall keep my blog updated with my little project as it goes along!